Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Hocus-Pocus. Part three.

We continue our analysis of typical attacking ideas in the King's Indian Attack (KIA).

The trade of the 'd' pawns.

Many inexperienced chessplayers facing the KIA for the first time try to open the center by playing d5xe4. Generally it is a good idea to open up the center when you are facing a King's side attack, but in this particular opening it has a serious drawback. The white pieces get more space for their maneuvers and after an eventual e4-e5 push, the 'e4' square becomes especially important! Meanwhile the open 'd' file is not particularly useful for Black since all the potential penetration squares are securely covered by White pieces. The next game illustrates the point very well. Even though only the Knight and the Queen were staying on the 'e4' square during the actual game, in many variations the White Rook and the Bishop could use this 'magic' square to join the attack too.

In the next classical game Fischer initiated the trade of the 'd' pawns himself by the timely 9.dxc5! move. First he occupied the 'e4' square and later he completely dominated on the whole board. Enjoy this true positional masterpiece!

For those who play the classical King's Indian Defense (KID) this idea shouldn't come as a surprise since this is exactly what black does in the KID (Nh5 or Ne8 followed by f7-f5). The f4-pawn greatly increases White's presence in the center and frequently signals a direct King's side attack. Look at the next two games played by Fischer where White employed this idea. In one of them Fischer was on the receiving end which speaks volumes about the strength of this idea. It is not every day you can see a game where Fischer was completely outplayed from the opening till the end of the game!

And here is another Fischer masterpiece where White's attack appeared out of nowhere! I want to give you a chance to test your attacking skills, so the game is given as a Quiz. Please remember that you can always replay the whole game from the first move if you click "Solution" and then "Move list". So, here it is, a quiet opening position...

Of course it is impossible to cover all possible moves and ideas of the King's Indian Attack (or any other opening for this matter). But I hope that this series of articles could be a good starting point for those of you who would like to include this dangerous attacking opening in your repertoire.